Thistle is a ghost town in Spanish Fork Canyon in southeastern Utah County, Utah, United States. During the era of steam locomotives, the town's primary industry was servicing trains for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (often shortened to D&RG, D&RGW, or Rio Grande). The fortunes of the town were closely linked with those of the railroad until the changeover to diesel locomotives, when the town started to decline.
In April 1983, a massive landslide (specifically a complex earthflow) dammed the Spanish Fork River. The residents were evacuated as nearly of water backed up, flooding the town. Thistle was destroyed; only a few structures were left partially standing. Federal and state government agencies have said this was the most costly landslide in United States history, the economic consequences of which affected the entire region. The landslide resulted in the first presidentially declared disaster area in Utah.
U.S. Route 6 (US‑6), U.S. Route 89 (US‑89) and the railroad (now part of Union Pacific Railroad's Central Corridor) were closed for several months, until they were rebuilt on a higher alignment overlooking the area. The remains of Thistle are visible from a view area along US‑89 or from the California Zephyr passenger train.
Geography Thistle is about southeast of Salt Lake City, at the confluence of the two primary tributaries to the Spanish Fork River, Thistle Creek and Soldier Creek. This confluence, at an elevation of , is also the junction of two naturally formed routes across the mountains of central Utah. The primary route crosses the Wasatch Mountains, via the Wasatch Plateau and Soldier Summit. This route was carved by the tributaries of the Price River on the eastern side of the mountains and the Spanish Fork on the west. In addition, Thistle Creek provides a route south from Thistle towards the communities of the Sanpete and Sevier valleys. The Spanish Fork flows northwest from Thistle, towards and through the city of Spanish Fork, before reaching Utah Lake.
These natural paths have provided the route of several transcontinental trails, highways and railroads since their discovery. The named transportation arteries passing through Thistle include: US‑6 (originally numbered US-50), US‑89, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad's Utah Division (now part of Union Pacific Railroad's Central Corridor) and D&RGW's Marysvale Branch line (abandoned because of the landslide).
History
The trade route on which Thistle lies was used by Indian tribes before the arrival of European settlers; two Ute chiefs, Taby and Peteetneet, led tribal migrations through the canyon each spring and fall. The first recorded journey by Europeans to modern Thistle was the Domínguez–Escalante expedition, which explored the territory with Indian guides in 1776.
Most of Thistle's residents were railroad employees sent to live in the town, but there were some who had settled before the railroads arrived. The first settlers were part of the Mormon migration to Utah, and the first of these was the Pace family, who migrated from Nauvoo, Illinois, reaching Thistle in 1848. Fifth-generation descendants of the Pace settlers continued to operate a family-owned cattle ranch until the town was evacuated. Other settlers included Mormons who originally settled elsewhere in Utah but subsequently arrived to homestead fertile ground on Billies Mountain, on the north wall of the canyon. Among them was the mountain's presumed namesake, William Johnson. A small group of Utes inhabiting the canyon frequently raided the newcomers, and as a result were forcibly relocated in the 1870s.
Homesteading was practiced in Thistle until the early 1900s. Until the arrival of the railroads, the town's economy was based mainly on farming and ranching, although there was also some mining activity in the region, including a vein of asphaltum that was mined between 1892 and 1914.
Railroads The first railroad track laid through Thistle was a narrow-gauge spur line servicing coal mines near today's Scofield Reservoir, built in 1878 by the Utah and Pleasant Valley Railway. By 1890, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, which acquired the line in a foreclosure sale in 1882, had rebuilt the line to standard gauge. The D&RGW connected this line with one they had built west from Colorado, completing a link from Salt Lake City to Denver.
The railroad built several facilities in Thistle to service and prepare trains for the change in grade and curvature of the line. The railroad placed helper engines on eastbound trains at Thistle for the ascent to Soldier Summit. The town provided a meal service for the trains until the use of on-board dining cars eliminated the need for meal stops.
Thistle saw more rail traffic with the construction of the Marysvale Branch line. This line branched from the main at Thistle, following modern US‑89 towards mines near Marysvale. Another line through Thistle, paralleling the D&RGW main, was built by the Utah Railway. The two lines were later combined into a dual-track main line as part of a trackage rights agreement between the two companies.
Rail traffic through Thistle continued to increase as the Rio Grande cooperated with connecting railroads, making the rail line through Thistle a bridge line for transcontinental rail traffic. The growth of Thistle was closely tied to the success of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad throughout the era of steam locomotives.
At its peak, around 1917, Thistle had about 600 residents. The town's railroad infrastructure included a five-stall roundhouse, depot, machine shop, and structures to restock passing trains with sand, coal and water. Non-railroad infrastructure included general stores, a post office, barber shop, saloon, pool hall, bakeries and restaurants. The largest building was a two-story schoolhouse, built in 1911.
In the 1950s, the Denver & Rio Grande Western began to phase out steam locomotives in favor of diesel locomotives, which require less maintenance. With the change in technology, Thistle faded in importance. Gradually the town shrank in population; the passenger depot was torn down in 1972 and the post office closed in 1974. Thistle was listed in a book of Utah ghost towns published 1972, with the author noting most of the remaining buildings were abandoned with a handful of permanent residents in the city.Stephen L. Carr (1972, revised 1986). The historical guide to Utah ghost towns. Western Epics, ISBN 9780914740308 By 1983, only a few families remained in Thistle.
Landslide
Rio Grande maintenance personnel began noticing unstable ground downstream from Thistle years before the landslide occurred. Maintenance crews repaired the track on several occasions, but they did not fully investigate the problem. Beginning with the remnants of Hurricane Olivia, the autumn and winter of 1982–83 featured record-breaking snow and rainfall. As the spring thaw melted the winter snow, the mountains in the area became saturated with water.
By April 1983, track deformation was a serious issue. On April 13, the division track master flew to Denver to explain the situation at a specially-called staff meeting. On the same day, a Utah Highway Patrol officer struck a newly created buckle in the highway that threw him against the roof of his vehicle. By the end of the day, a full maintenance crew was struggling to keep US‑6/US‑89 open. All trains were limited to speeds less than , and were accompanied by maintenance personnel who had to continually work to keep the tracks in line. The last train to pass through downtown Thistle was the westbound Rio Grande Zephyr, on April 14, 1983 at about 8:30 p.m. That night, both US‑6/US‑89 and the rail line were closed. One westbound freight train that had already left Denver was turned back. All through trains between Denver and Salt Lake City were rerouted to Union Pacific Railroad's Overland Route through Wyoming. By April 16, the tracks were completely buried and a voluntary evacuation order was issued for the town.
On April 17, a final attempt to keep the landslide from blocking the flow of the river failed. That day, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Rio Grande announced plans to abandon the existing transportation arteries and build new corridors. Both the highway and railroad would be re-routed by blasting a path scaling the north wall of Spanish Fork Canyon. The new arteries would pass the slide by dynamiting through Billies Mountain, also along the north canyon wall. Engineers estimated the dam created by the toe of the landslide would eventually reach tall. The evacuation order was changed from voluntary to mandatory. Volunteers transported as many people and belongings as possible to the small town of Birdseye, about south. Most residents were able to recover only a fraction of their belongings; some had less than two hours' notice before the water reached their house. Thistle's oldest resident celebrated her 90th birthday at the evacuation center in Birdseye. By the 18th, the waterline had reached the rooftops of the 22 previously occupied houses. By the 19th, an entire mountain was moving at about per hour, and US‑6/US‑89 was buried by of soil.
Governor Scott Matheson requested federal aid to deal with the situation. After a visit to the area by the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. president Ronald Reagan issued the first presidential disaster area declaration for the state of Utah. The landslide eventually formed a dam that created a lake long and over deep. Concerned the dam could fail, the state of Utah decided to build a tunnel to re-route the flow of the river. The residents of downstream Spanish Fork were told to be prepared to evacuate. Engineers estimated that if the dam failed, they would have 30 to 45 minutes notice before the water reached the city.
Aftermath
Thistle was almost completely destroyed. Most wooden buildings were carried away in the floodwaters. The state installed a temporary pumping station to prevent the lake from overflowing the dam; patrol boats skimmed up the floating remains of the town to prevent the debris from blocking the pumps. Most remains were either naturally deposited or placed on the eastern shore of the lake.
By autumn, the tunnels to restore the flow of the river and drain the lake were operational. Shortly after, debates among former residents, neighboring residents, and government agencies began on what to do with the dam created by the landslide; some wanted to make the lake permanent. The state engineer commissioned a study to determine if the landslide dam could be used to retain water; it recommended building a new dam upstream from the landslide, rather than attempting engineering work on the landslide dam.